Converting Hair curves into Hair cards in Blender | 3.6 and +
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ธ.ค. 2023
- Here's a tutorial on how to convert hair curves from Blender's new hair system into hair cards !
This method should help you create hair, fur and feathers that can be used for animation or turned into game-ready assets.
Was the tutorial easy or difficult to follow ? Constructive feedback is welcome ! :)
Demo file and textures : rakenval.gumroad.com/l/yyufn
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Text-to-speech voice : Male storyteller from Capcut
#3dhair #hairgrooming #3dartist #geonodes #haircards #gameasset #3dcharacter #blender #hairstyle #stylized - ภาพยนตร์และแอนิเมชัน
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you're actually a freaking genius. This vid fixed a lot of problems I had and helped me learn about more geometry nodes too. Thank you.
You're welcome ^^
This is a really excellent set of tools and video. Thank you very much
So useful! thanks for sharing!!
Amazing nodes structure!!
I need this, thank you!
Amazing, thank you
This tutorial is amazing and an absolute life saver for my project, thank you so much!! Subscribed!
great tuto thank you
Thanks for the tutorial, liked and subscribed.
This is something I have been looking for. Thank you :) You are the best.
Glad to help
Thanks for the support :D
@@rakenval As much as I can :)
It would be great if you upload files to gumroad instead of drive, so we can support you.
ah that's a good point, I was to lazy to make the gumroad page lol
But I've updated the link, it's on gumroad now ^^
❤thank you!
Hey, Rakenval. I finally did it. Through happy accident, I have found a way to create the groomable Hair Cards that actually align properly with the character. The only thing missing from the process is pre-texturing the cards. When I post the tutorial (my first ever) I am going to shout out to you and to PixelicaCG for getting me pointed in the right direction. Cheers, mate!
Ah I'm glad to hear you've figured it out ! Also, feel free to post a link to your first tuto here if you want
Cheers !
@@rakenval Thanks! There's still a couple of things to work out, and also, I've been having trouble with my computer as far as getting my audio to work properly....outdated drivers, I think. It'll be a bit before I do the full tutorial, but when I do, I'll let you know when it's up. :) Thanks again for pointing me in the right direction.
I really want that tutorial
@@Lanthiren With great regret, that technique ended up taking an unexpected turn towards disaster. I thought I had it locked down, but I was fooling myself. I am hoping Blender does something in a future update that makes Hair System to Hair Mesh grooming much easier.
wow, thanks you!!
Thanks a lot. 🙏
THIS!!
Rakenval, THANK YOU for this! I remember we had a good exchange of info before when I mentioned converting your previous tutorial to meshes...and you had said you were going to do a tut on hair cards from the curves system as soon as you figured it out. We both knew that somehow it would involve Line Meshes, but I'm not all that good with spider webs of Geometry Nodes. I'm glad you figured it out, and thank you for sharing your knowledge. Cheers, mate!🍺
Aligning the hair curves so that they are conformed to the head mesh....that's something else. I did find a sort of quick fix for that, but this involves placing sparse guide hair curves before going hog wild with Add or Density curves. (God, I hope I make sense with this.)
Here's how I do this, adapting your tutorial: After adding the Empty Hair curve to the head mesh, set the mirror to X with the Prevent Collision button highlit. This is for starting the "kitchen" in your hair build. (The "kitchen" is the lowest set of hair between the mid-to-base of the skull, and the shoulders). Add a hair to either side of the back base of the skull, or perhaps midway up from the base of the skull. The mirror mode will add the hair strand on the other side. Turn off the mirror mode, and add one more hair directly between the two side strands. Applying the Curve to Mesh and Curve Line nodes, go ahead and groom the hair strands down into a general shape. Once you've done that, turn the mirror mode back on. While still in sculpt mode, select "Pinch", and very carefully apply strokes to the the Root of the hair strands on the sides. If you do this right, the roots will turn inward to align with the shape of the head mesh. If you mess up, just undo, and start again. This is not exactly a surgical process, but it does require an easy touch. If only there were a "tilt" function in the hair curves (without involving Geometry Nodes), that would make this TONS easier. Once those three strands are shaped, you can then Add hairs (or use Density) ensuring that the length, count, and shape boxes are all checked so that the additional strands will conform. I'm in the very rough stages of this procedure, so student beware. :)
As for the texturing, I usually worry about that after I've converted the Hair Curves to Mesh. (Keeping the original hair curves in case I need to do some more tweaking later. Yeah, it sounds pretty tedious as opposed to your method, but my first priority is just getting the hair cards in place.) Again, keep in mind, this is AFTER you've converted to Mesh. The tedium is when first, assign a UV map to your newly formed hair cards Mesh. Then, you need to go into UV Editing (be in Edit Mode), and you will probably have to get each card to Follow Active Quads individually. I tried to see if the faces in the entire mesh would conform, but alas, no....so you will have to do each hair card individually. Then, when you've got that mapped out, you will have to remain in the UV editor, and rotate each hair card's UV 180 degrees so that the Roots of each strand align with whatever hair texture you employ. (This is assuming that in your image texture, the root of your hair is at the top of the image. If the image is upside down, with the root at the bottom of the image, you might not have to undergo the tedium of rotating each UV map. ....which reminds me, from now on, I'll just flip the texture images vertically in the UV window ....THAT will cut down on the UV flip tedium. LOL! I'm rambling, I think.
Hey ! You're welcome about the tut
Your method can definitely be usefull when you plan to have lots of curves to align. Combing the roots to rotate them is super tedious but I also resorted to this. You can also rotate the converted mesh cards on their x axis using the normals as Transform Orientation, but that's still tedious.
There is a manual tilt function in edit mode (CTRL + T) but it seems bugged. Like it works in new file but stops working after some time (don't know what causes it to stop working). It's also weird that I couldn't find the function in the "curves" menu. So I'm hopeful they will fix this in later updates.
So one other do it is to create the groom in a new file where the shortcut still works, try to finish it placing the main guides quick, and then append it to your main file.
There is also the "Set Curve tilt node" that is intereseting but it requires a value in degress, not a vector, no it's beyond my skills to find out how to match tilt degree with surface normal.
And the reason why I bother with texturing before applying is because I find it easier, I only have to unwrap 3 or 4 cards, and I can still modify some of them later on (I did it for the tail feathers). The only real downside is having to make sure the shape of both proxies and cards rougly match, but other than that it only takes a few minutes to make ^^
@@rakenval There is a tutorial by a Tuber named Dean Zarkov where he adapts the old method of anime hair via curves into the new hair system, and he does a section on how to rotate the hair curves (Set Curve Tilt and Math nodes)...but I think he misses a step somewhere (and also, he kinda goes through his process pretty fast...hard to keep up, even in playback), and I can't quite replicate what he does. Other than those minor irks, it's a good tutorial. It's called "Stylized Hair in Blender - FASTER with Hair Curves!"
Oh, believe me, I know that texturing before hand on curves is a very helpful method....if only Blender would've made it easier to texture curves without all that Node work. LOL! And I can see where the whole matching up of proxies and finals would be a minor PITA.
You would think that Blender would've made the hair curves very similar in functionality to Bezier or Path curves by allowing Tilt, extrusion, etc.... but for whatever reason, they didn't. Hopefully they'll improve on this in a future update. That would make hair creation tons easier.
Thank you for another great exchange of info, mate!
A technique I used to use...and may well revert back to... is where I would place hair system curves on my character's scalp mesh. I would also have, standing by, a few different hair cards laid out at the base of the character. After I placed and groomed the hair curves on the scalp, I would convert those hair curves to Mesh, then to Curves. This has the benefit of having the roots of the hair already in place for the more tedious tasks of this method.....applying copies of the hair cards to the curves using the Curves Modifier.
Where the tedium comes into play is as follows:
1. First, you need to name your converted Curve groom. (You could've named it while it was still a Hair Curve, but, I just go from here). If you have sections of Curves (bangs, sides, mane, kitchen, L part, R part, fly away, etc), name them accordingly, followed by .000. (example, L Part.000). Next, you go into Edit mode, and if all of the Curve strands are highlit, you select a Curve, and deselect it with Shift+L. Then Seperate it by Typing P, then click on Separate). Tab back to Object mode, then right back into Edit Mode. The remaining Curves will still be highlit. Repeat this process for each Curve. The cool thing is, each new seperated Curve will be renamed in order automatically (L Part.001, L Part.002, etc).
Once you have finished that, you can then prepare to apply the Hair Cards to your Curves with the Curve Modifier. (More tedium, but definitely worth the effort) (if you have hair textures applied to the card, this will be a big help) I usually make sure that the root of the SOURCE hair card in in world origin by Moving the hair card down the +X axis (while in Edit Mode), with the root stopping at the World Origin , and apply Origin to Cursor (this assumes that your Cursor is in the World Origin position 0,0,0). Apply appropriate Transforms. If they applied correctly, you will be able to place the hair card copies properly on your first Curve strand. Make a Copy of your SOURCE Hair Card, and rename it, suffixed by .000 (Example: Hair Card.000). Add the Curve Modifier to Hair Card.000. In the Curve Object list on the modifier, select L Part.000... ideally, it's a good practice to just match the Hair Card.000 to L Part.000. If your Hair Card is oriented to +X, then it should conform to L Part.000. You can lengthen or shorten the Hair Card on the Curve by typing S, then X. After that, you might have to Ctrl+T to Tilt the Hair Card so that it aligns along your scalp surface. Now, the cool part is, you can just Copy the Curve modified Hair Card. It will automatically rename to L Part.001, and then go into the Curve Object list on the Curve Modifier, and select L Part.001. This will apply that copied hair card to the next Curve. Lather, Rinse, Repeat. Yes, it's a tedious process, but it does work out a lot quicker than you realize. The obvious advantages are auto-renaming of each Hair Card, and then, the ability to Tilt or resize your hair cards with their assigned Curves.
This was the functionality I thought they should've applied to the Hair Curves, so that you don't have to go through Conversion process (to Mesh, then to standard Curves).
@@rakenval Ok, I have thought of a way to make hair cards (post-grooming) out of the converted Hair Curves to Bezier Curves method.
First, place your Hair Curves and groom them. You really won't need a whole mess or density of Hair Curves, just enough so that when you apply the Bevel later, it should fill up any gaps (with a little bit of judicious Tilting or Resizing).
After your Hair Curves are in place, and satisfactorily groomed, Convert them To Mesh, then to Curves.
Then, in Edit Mode, select all the Curves, convert the Spline Type to Bezier, and Clean Up>Decimate the points to a manageable level.
Return to Object Mode, then, place a Bezier Curve in the world origin, and straighten it out along the Y axis. (Edit Mode, S, Y, 0).
Select your converted hair Curves, Go into the Curves Data Properties, Select Geometry, go down to Bevel and select the Object tab. Using the Object pull down list, select your Bezier Curve you created at the World Origin. This alone will actually create the extrusions on your hair Curves. You can adjust the width of the extrusions with your Bezier Curve at the world origin by S, X and then move your mouse to scale the length of your Bezier Curve.
Then you can adjust any Tilts or Resizing of your hair Curves. After you are satisfied, you can convert the Curves to Meshes. You will find these are pretty face-dense Meshes. Before you start monkeying with face count, you might want to apply your hair textures onto your new hair card Meshes. You may have to reorient the UV layout in the UV Editing tab. This will depend on how your textures are oriented in relation to your UV island of the hair cards. If using PNGs, be sure to apply Alpha Hashed under Settings in the Material Data Properties and then go into the Shading tab, and connect the Alpha output of your Texture node, to the Alpha input of the Principled BSDF Node. If all is done right, you should now have textured hair cards in place your character.
Until the next TL'DR. Cheers, mate! (and I just happy accidented another method....but I'm not going to post another TL;DR. I may actually try a video tut)
That's another valid way, thanks for sharing it ^^
Though, for those who do not want to bother with the unwrapping and texturing, the "proxies / instanced cards" also works on non-hair curves. So you can groom and choose the radius of you curves in geo nodes, convert to curves/bezier/decimate, and then add the nodes to create the instance cards. That way you can tilt the curves manually (this option hadn't cross my mind before your comment)
Or you could just convert the full geonode groom to mesh and use proportional editing, and Transform Orientations set to Normal to twist and taper the hair cards by hand.
There are like 1000 unexplored options, it never ends :D
Though if we get tilt and radius in 4.1, then all of those method will become kind of obsolete ^^'
Hey thanks a lot. It would great if you can explain detailed step by step process for the whole. Will it be possible?
Hi, what do you mean by "for the whole" exactly ? Unless I'm mistaken there aren't any unshown steps for the nodes 😅
Well, I had posted my tutorial on my other channel, but now I'm getting a report that the video is unavailable. TH-cam is wonky.
My only issue is that it scales up when it gets longer
nice vid honestly didnt understannd a thing but thats on me like how do u guys even get all these stuff and be this good at it
also stupid question but why exzctly did u do this cause in the last video u showed how to do hair using the new geonode system so why use cards for the hair is it to make if more efficient?
Haha thanks. I did it because I needed feathers for my character, but since it also works for hair and someone else brought up the topic of hair for games, I figured I'd show it with hair too.
It can be more efficient when it comes to performance, but I really just wanted feathers
thx for your tutorial it's really helpful, I wanted to know if it's possible to bend our haircard along the X and Y axis at the same time? I've tried to edge split my card but it's destroy my hair. I'm not into the geometry nodes on blender..
I'm not 100% sure what you mean, but you can use a custome curve profile to create any shape of card you want, including a bent one. For example, if you take a poly curve with 2 controle points to recreate the curve line and subdivide the points, you'll be able to bend the cards on their y axis by moving the newly created control point in the middle.
You'll just need to replace the Curve Line node used as a profile in the node tree with a "object info" node containing your custom curve, and make sure you use this custom profile for both the card instances and the proxies
I hope it answered your question ^^'
Excellent! I did it! It works! Thank you! Quick question: how could I rotate my cards, so the space in between the hairs doesn't look empty from certain angles?
Ah, that's a tricky one.
I don't know any quick way to resolves this. I'd try to align the curves' tilt along the surface mesh's normals, if only I knew how ^^'
But one thing you could try to counter the flatness of the cards, is to use a custom profile made of multiple 2 points lines to create more complex cards. Like in this example :
imgur.com/a/ikM46Zt
As of now, Hair Curves don't have the standard Tilt, Extrusion, or Resize functions that Bezier or Path Curves have. There is a way to do it with a spider web of Geometry Nodes (tutorial by Dean Zarkov).
@Flandelacasa @rakenval
I'm really new to Geometry Nodes as a whole, but I found that you can tilt the cards if you place a Set Curve Tilt node between the Resample Curve node and Set Curve Radius node.
@@sonic26000 thanks! I’ll give it a shot
Thank you so much !! can we use guides with this technique ? and can we use principled hair bsdf with this ? I tried but it's does'nt really match with the transparence of the cards. It's look weird
I'm not sure but I don't think the hair bsdf is made to work with cards, it's more adapted to curves
About the guide, I've never tried, but I think it's possible as long as you adapt the profile to something more appropriate. For curl guides, a high point count could suffice, for braids, a circle profile would be best
This is just a guess though
@@rakenval ok thank you !
I wish the new hair system would allow us to control the tilt and radius manually for each curves. Do you know if they plan on adding the feature?
I don't know, I think the tilt feature is supposed to be here but is bugged. In some files, I can edit the tilt manually in edit mode with CTRL + T , but after some times, or in old files, it stops working. I don't know if it's bugged, I don't know why it stops working, but I agree, manual tweaking of tilt and radius is lacking.
The new system is still developping though. I'm sure they'll add this and more to it with time.
@@rakenval Aye, the hair curve system is radically different from the standard curves system. Features in the standard curves system are missing from hair curves, such as extrusion, tilt, capping, tapering. You would think it would've been a no brainer for Blender to incorporate these features into the hair curves system, but then again, I'm not a programmer, so I don't know if they ran into problems with things like the aforementioned standard curves features, and aligning the extrusions so that they aren't perpendicular to the target scalp/head mesh. My big question was, if the devs VRoid could figure out how to do this, why couldn't the devs at Blender? I have some pretty cynical views as to why, but I'll avoid voicing them here.
I don't know, maybe it's just not on their priority list. I mean it's pretty good what they've done already, though I wouldn't call it production ready yet. It's still new. Three updates ago we didn't even have the hair modifiers, it was even less user-friendly, so yeah, we'll just have to wait a bit I'm afraid ^^
@@rakenval Agreed! Ultimately, I think their priorities with hair system are rendering and simulation, not conversion for external animation or game apps, even though you'd think they understood that a LOT of their users are wanting to make hair for games or animation apps outside of Blender.
It's supposed to replace the old particle system eventually, which was a terrible option to make hair cards anyway (like I never managed to use the particle instance modifier whithout problems)
Making hair for games just came as a bonus, made possible by geonodes
Like we're halfway towards the possibilty to create solid grooms fully procedurally, but a lot of the manual work can already be replaced with geo nodes and that's quite cool
I think that's why they haven't incorporated much of the standard curves' features into the new system yet
And even if they don't plan to, addons will surely pop up to compensate
awesome tutorial! One question: I can't apply the curves to cards modifier (and are curves (I tested on the file you provided))
Try converting the system to a mesh, it should apply everything
Bro please help me I’m in a great problem here! I made a complete hair style in blender but when play it or bake it. All the hair blown out infinitely after few frames. Please help me .
Hmm that could be caused by a lot of things. But the most common source is a wrong collision distance. It's often too big by default, so the collider pushes the hair away.
It's hard to tell just like that
Ok, I see what I did wrong...I had posted the video as Private by accident. Now it's public and should work:
th-cam.com/video/YmeV3Z3L6Rs/w-d-xo.html
Quick and easy way to make ALIGNED hair cards in Blender using Hair System.
It says: "the video is removed"
Hi , Rakenval , nice content..
I tried this method for hair card , i stuck with one issue is there any way to rotate those instanced Hair cards .?
Hey!
Since the 4.1 version, you should be able to use CTRL T on the hair curve to change the tilt
@@rakenval it's a Hair curve How can select individual curve in hair system.?
btw I am greatfull you replied ... 😇
@@ManishYadav-bk7gu With the hair curve object selected, go to edit mode, you should be able to grab individual curves here ^^
Oh and there is a select per point or per strand mode like vertices/edges/faces mode in a regular mesh object
broo your video help me alot🥲❣
Hey, Rakenval, I've figured out a way to get even better lays from the hair curves system so that they conform to the style mesh. It's a little more tedious, but definitely results in better lays when you apply the Set Hair Curve Profile modifier. And don't let the word "tedious" bother you too much, because trust me, it's not as tedious as it sounds. If I can, I'll post another tutorial. Since, with Hair Cards, you don't need as many strands, this is actually easier than one might think. Also, instead of using the Strand Select brush in the Sculpt mode, I go to Edit mode, and select the individual hair curves from there. Make sure you are in Strand select mode which can be selected in Edit mode as well as Sculpt mode. In fact, I think it is easier and far more accurate than trying to select from Sculpt mode. Although I haven't experimented with this aspect, in Edit mode, you can go back to Point Select, and when you go back to Sculpt mode, it should make it easier to groom just your specified section of strand, as opposed to the whole strand itself. If there is but one downside to this method, it is that if you try to add a new Hair strand with the Shape box checked, the new hair strand ends up going straight down into the style mesh, instead of conforming to the shape of the strands around it. I'll keep you posted. Cheers, and Happy New Year, my friend.
Hey ! That sounds interesting ! Personally I'm waiting for the 4.1 update to go back to hair grooming, hoping the tilt function will help a lot.
Also I agree that selecting the strands in edit mode instead of using the Strand select brush is much easier. I've never liked it, but I think it's made for realistic grooms that have way more curves
Happy new year to you too ^^
@@rakenval Yeah, hopefully they won't just include the tilt function, but perhaps radius as well....but if not, well, the Set Hair Profile Modifier kinda takes care of that.
The big problem I ran into with the technique I developed is that when you get to certain areas of the UV sphere, the hair alignment doesn't work quite as well, and when you start grooming those particular strands, they can twist out of alignment.
The reason that I like selecting individual Hair Curves from Edit mode is that you don't have a variable cursor size to worry about to accidentally select Hair Curves you didn't want to include. I think there's a finer degree of selection control with just using the standard cursor in Edit mode. I can get why some would still just prefer to use the Select Cursor in Sculpt Mode though.
I'm reverting, at least temporarily, to an older system where I use the BSurface feature (add on?) that allows me to surface draw Annotation Polygon lines that I can convert into Mesh and then Curves. I could conceivably then turn those curves into Hair Curves, and see what the Set Hair Profile does with that. If that doesn't work out like I'd hope, then I have a back up plan of separating the newly formed standard Curves into individual Curves that I can apply Hair Cards to using the Curve Deform Modifier. The cool things about that system are, A. the roots are pretty much in the right place if you've drawn from top to bottom, and B. once you place the first Hair Card to the first Curve, and tilt it so that it conforms to the hair shape Mesh, you can copy that Hair Card to the next Curve, and it will retain the twist of the previous Card placement. You will still have to do little tweaks along the way, but the results usually turn out pretty good.
Here's hoping for a vastly improved Hair System by 4.1!
@@saintelmo5590 Nice discussion. I will follow
Ah I see, I was using a similar method before the new hair system too
Ans frankly if you're looking to make a sophisticated groom this might still be the best way at the moment, thanks to all the controls it still offers
But I was just copying and pasting the curves to place them manually instead of using addons or the curve pen. It never occured to me I could go faster that way lol
Hair cards aside, what I'd love on top of a manual tilt fonction is for the Set Hair Profile to be able to affect both root and tip of the actual hair curve (and not an added custom profile) in Eevee
The old system couldn't do that either, but that'd be great and less perfomance heavy to make tiny feather shapes for example
@@kelvinartstudio Hey, thank you! That is most kind. :) And the more ideas, the better. I think, maybe between the three of us, we might be able to start a Hair Club for Characters. :D
Geometry nodes are too complicated for me. I have been looking for ways to make hair and feathers cards for my game in UE, but everything is a giant puzzle. Aren’t there any plugins that can specialize in this kind of things?
The Hair Tool addon in Blender is great for hair cards, and will maybe be easier to learn than geonodes, you should check it out .
really confusing and not step by step from stratch
I'm sorry to hear you had trouble with it, I will try to make future tutos less confusing
However keep in mind that those aren't for beginners, depending on your level they may still be harder to understand